Bianca climbed out of his arms and headed over to her bags where the rations were. Now her stomach really was protesting the lack of food.
She took in the walls of the cave--the curves were obviously too precise to be hand-tooled. Designs were carved into the stone faces, intricate patterns, and she wondered if they had any meaning more than decoration. Someone had taken a long time creating them.
They probably meant something to someone. It was hard to think that others had lived in these caves and ate what they could find. What natural food sources were on this moon? Were there animals somewhere that survived in this level of cold?
She slipped on a jumpsuit from the supply bag and wrapped up in her now dry over dresses. The heavier fabric was almost like wearing a blanket. Not her favorite way to dress, and she noticed there were quite a few bits of damage to the overcoats, but since when did that matter?
She was alive.
And her best hope was that the rest of the party was alive.
She brushed her hair out of her face, bumping the earrings Caoimhe had given her. Made from her mother's royal crown and of great importance to the princess, they were connected with what the Emperor was doing.
While the man talked in his sleep, he never said anything special to push the war effort. Mostly, he mumbled gibberish. What in the world that could be, she had no idea. The most the Emperor talked about in his sleep was breaking the wormhole port.
Which was just silly because a wormhole port was only a jump station. Ports connected to a warp-speed travel tunnel that flew through the galaxy. A tube of faster-than-light travel. Ships did not travel faster than light speeds. They just entered the ports and rode through like rafts in a river, then got off at their locations. No longer did humanoids have to take generations to travel long distances.
She glanced back at Harbin. Did their cybernetic parts not allow them to travel through the wormhole portals? Is that why he said it would take a generation to travel to a different location? Or were the other places they had considered just that far away, in a neighboring galaxy?
Generation ships were a relic from the past. That was how Disguised Serenity started--the space station was a generational ship, built to take settlers and their families across the galaxy to live and grow up on the ship.
The idea was that the people who landed at the new location would be the next generation from those who boarded the ship. The children, or grandchildren, depending on the length of the journey, would be the colonists. It was what humanoids did pre-faster-than-light travel.
The wormhole ports were designed to bridge the gap between sectors of space. And for the most part, they were great. They did their job and got people from one end of space to another, usually in a few days.
Why the Emperor dreamed about breaking one of the ports puzzled her.
She ate her little food bar, and while it was ghastly, it did seem to quiet her hungry stomach. She mulled over the idea of what breaking a portal would do while she popped a couple of water tabs.
Bianca’s mind wandered back to the princesses and the others.
"I hope they are well," she said.
"If my unit caught them all, then they are well," Harbin said, rolling onto his side. He put his arm on his side and pulled the pillow from the survival pack under his head. She'd removed some of the survival bedding, though she'd left the repulsor tech bed in the bag. More than once, she had one break on her and fall to the ground.
No, sleeping on the flat, hard surface was fine with her.
"You Terrans might have something with these pillows. I rather like it."
"Wait until you experience a proper bed."
"Is that an invitation?"
"Possibly. If you behave." She smacked him with her pillow. He grabbed her and wrestled her down on top of him. Which was far more comfortable than just sitting on the cave floor.
She ran her hand over his shoulder, along his jaw.
Just looked at him. Stared at the shapes of his face. The feel of the hair under his chin that needed to be shaved soon. The way his eyebrows were thick but still defined over his white eyes. Up close, she could see the faintest outline of an iris in the white.
"You seem quite fascinated with me," he said.
"You're handsome. Though I cannot believe you do not have pillows."
"We don't always sleep laying down."
"That is a ghastly concept. You could be just standing in a corner or something?”
"Sometimes."
